That made Jason think of other scenes, and of tender passages in his broken life that were gone from him forever. He had no wish to recall them; their pleasure was too painful, their sweets too bitter; they were lost, and God grant that they could be forgotten. Yet every night as he worked at his walls he looked longingly across the shoulder of the hill in the direction of the hospital, half fancying he knew the sweet grace of the figure he sometimes saw there, and pretending with himself that he remembered the light rhythm of its movement. After a while he missed what he looked for, and then he asked his neighbor if the nurse were ill that he had not seen her lately.
"Ill? Well, yes," said the old priest. "She has been turned away from the hospital."
"What!" cried Jason; "you thought her a good nurse."
"She was too good, my lad," said the priest, "and a blackguard warder who had tried to corrupt her, and could not, announced that somebody else had done so."
"It's a lie," cried Jason.
"It was plain enough," said the priest, "that she was about to give birth to a child, and as she would make no explanation she was turned adrift."
"Where is she now?" asked Jason.
"Lying in at the farmhouse on the edge of the snow yonder," said the priest. "I saw her last night. She trusted me with her story, and it was straight and simple. Her husband had been sent out to the mines by the old scoundrel at Reykjavik. She had followed him, only to be near him and breathe the air he breathed. Perhaps with some wild hope of helping his escape she had hidden her true name and character and taken the place of a menial, being a lady born."
"Then her husband is still at the mines?" said Jason.
"Yes," said the priest.